Contemporary Theatre
Contemporary theatre encompasses the experimental, devised, and postdramatic performance of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries, in which text, image, body, and audience are reconfigured beyond the conventions of the dramatic play.
Definition
The study of experimental and postdramatic theatre and performance from the later twentieth century to the present.
Scope
This topic surveys theatre since roughly 1960: the postdramatic theatre theorized by Hans-Thies Lehmann, devised and collaborative creation, performance art and live art, director-led and image-based theatre, documentary and verbatim theatre, immersive and site-specific work, and the use of new media on stage. It attends to how contemporary theatre questions the primacy of the dramatic text and foregrounds presence, event, and the spectator's role.
Core questions
- How has theatre moved beyond the dramatic text toward performance and event?
- What characterizes postdramatic, devised, and immersive forms?
- How do contemporary works reposition the spectator and theatrical space?
- How have new media and globalization reshaped recent performance?
Key concepts
- postdramatic theatre
- devised theatre
- immersive and site-specific performance
- verbatim and documentary theatre
- liveness
- spectatorship
Key theories
- Postdramatic theatre
- Hans-Thies Lehmann's account of a theatre that no longer subordinates performance to a dramatic text, instead foregrounding presence, simultaneity, and the autonomy of theatrical signs.
- Performance as transformative event
- Erika Fischer-Lichte's aesthetics of the performative, in which the live, bodily co-presence of performers and spectators creates an autopoietic feedback loop that can transform participants.
History
From the 1960s onward, happenings, performance art, and the experimental companies of the American and European avant-garde challenged conventional drama; subsequent decades saw the rise of director-led image theatre, devised and collaborative creation, documentary and verbatim work, and immersive and site-specific performance, theorized in part through Lehmann's notion of the postdramatic and a broader performative turn.
Debates
- Liveness in the age of mediatization
- Scholars debate whether live performance retains a distinctive ontological status or whether contemporary theatre is so saturated by recording and media that the live/mediated distinction collapses.
Key figures
- Hans-Thies Lehmann
- Erika Fischer-Lichte
- Robert Wilson
- Pina Bausch
- Arnold Aronson
Related topics
Seminal works
- lehmann2006
- fischerlichte2008
- aronson2000
Frequently asked questions
- What is postdramatic theatre?
- It is Hans-Thies Lehmann's term for forms of theatre that no longer treat performance as the staging of a dramatic text, instead emphasizing visual composition, the performer's presence, time, and the event itself.
- What is devised theatre?
- Devised theatre is work created collaboratively by a company through improvisation, research, and experiment rather than from a pre-existing script by a single playwright.